The Lord Sydenham | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada | |
| In office 1839–1841 | |
| Monarch | Victoria |
| Preceded by | Sir George Arthur, Bt |
| Succeeded by | Major GeneralJohn Clitherow |
| Governor General of the Province of Canada | |
| In office 1839–1841 | |
| Monarch | Victoria |
| Preceded by | The Earl of Durham GCB |
| Succeeded by | Sir Charles Bagot |
| President of the Board of Trade | |
| In office 5 June – 14 November 1834 | |
| Monarch | William IV |
| Prime Minister | The Earl Grey KG The Viscount Melbourne |
| Preceded by | The Earl of Auckland GCB |
| Succeeded by | The Lord Ashburton |
| In office 8 April 1835 – 29 August 1839 | |
| Monarchs | William IV; Victoria |
| Prime Minister | The Viscount Melbourne |
| Preceded by | The Lord Ashburton |
| Succeeded by | The Lord Taunton |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1799-09-13)13 September 1799 Waverley Abbey,Farnham, Surrey |
| Died | 19 September 1841(1841-09-19) (aged 42) Kingston, Ontario, Canada |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Whig |
Charles Poulett Thomson, 1st Baron Sydenham,GCB, PC (13 September 1799 – 19 September 1841) was a British businessman, politician, diplomat and the first Governor General of the unitedProvince of Canada.[1]
Born atWaverley Abbey House, nearFarnham, Surrey, Thomson was the son of John Buncombe Poulett Thomson, a London merchant, by his wife Charlotte, daughter of John Jacob. His father was the head of J. Thomson, T. Bonar and Company, a successful trading firm that had dealings withSaint Petersburg,Russian Empire, and was a principal merchant house in the Russian–Baltic trade.[2]
After attending private schools until age 16, Thomson entered the family firm at Saint Petersburg. In 1817 he came home due to poor health, and embarked on a prolonged tour ofSouthern Europe. He returned to Russia in 1821 and over the next three years travelled extensively inEastern Europe. He established permanent residence in London in 1824 but frequently visited the Continent, especially Paris.
Thomson was returned to theHouse of Commons asMP forDover in 1826. In 1830 he joinedEarl Grey's government asVice-President of the Board of Trade andTreasurer of the Navy, an office he held until 1834. In November 1831 Thomson accompaniedLord Durham to Paris to negotiate a new commercial treaty withJuly Monarchy France, but the project was not accomplished.[3] He was thenPresident of the Board of Trade underLord Melbourne in 1834 and succeededLord Auckland as president, and again between 1835 and 1839. A free-trader and an expert in financial matters, he was elected MP forManchester in 1832, a seat which he held until 1839. He was continuously occupied with negotiations affecting international commerce until 1839, when he accepted the Governorship of Canada.[4] After his appointment as a governor general ofBritish North America, he persuaded the legislature ofUpper Canada to consent to a union withLower Canada, and framed the constitution of the united province.[1] In 1832 he organised a special statistical department at the board of trade, and in 1837 instituted the school of design atSomerset House, in accordance with the recommendation of a select committee of the House of Commons made in 1835.[1]
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Sydenham succeededLord Durham as Governor General of Canada in 1839. He was responsible for implementing theUnion Act in 1840, unitingUpper Canada andLower Canada as the Province of Canada, and moving the seat of government toKingston. Upper Canadians were given a choice in the matter of union, which they accepted; Lower Canada had no say, and as a result, many French Canadians were opposed to both the union and Sydenham himself.
Later that year, he was raised to the peerage asBaron Sydenham, ofSydenham in the County of Kent and ofToronto in Canada[5] and was appointed knightgrand cross of theOrder of the Bath.[3]
Sydenham was just as anti-French as Lord Durham had been, and he encouraged British immigration to make the French Canadian population less significant. French Canadians referred to him asle poulet, "the chicken". Realising he had almost no support in Lower Canada (at this time Canada East), he reorganised electoral ridings to allow Anglo-Canadians to elect more members (such as by hiving French sections of Montreal out to outlying counties and reducing ability of property owners to cast plural votes).[6] Where that was not feasible, he allowedOrangeman mobs to beat up French candidates.Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine was one such candidate who suffered from Sydenham's influence. Montreal and Quebec city elected a clean sweep of English members in the first election in the united province. Lafontaine soon left Canada East to work withRobert Baldwin in creating a fairer union for both sides.
A new constitution uniting the two colonies was carried through the colonial parliaments and ratified by the British House of Commons. It came into force on 10 February 1841. It led ultimately to the great confederation of 1867.[1] In addition to this measure he carried another for local government, and he produced improvements in the matters of emigration, education, and public works.Charles Greville, in hisMemoirs wrote about Thomson:
In spite of his vanity he had many admirable qualities: tact, judgment, and prudence, firmness and decision, indefatigable and well-ordered application, and, above all, a disinterested devotion to the service of his country.[3]
Sydenham was accused of fomenting the Tory violence that marred the election of the1st Parliament of the Province of Canada.[7]
Sydenham also settled the Protestant land dispute over theclergy reserves in Upper Canada (at this time Canada West), which theFamily Compact had interpreted to refer only to theAnglican Church. Sydenham convinced the legislators to pass an Act whereby half of the land set aside for Protestant churches would be shared between Anglicans andPresbyterians, and the other half would be shared between the other Protestant denominations.[8]
Sydenham worked to make Canada financially viable so that there would be less danger of annexation by the United States. He worked on this policy throughout the 1830s, when he was President of the Board of Trade inBritain. But he did not implement any economic reforms once he arrived in Canada.
After less than two years as Governor General, Sydenham died in 1841, at age 42. He had been described as sickly and an autopsy revealed severegout. Shortly before his death, he had resigned his position and was due to return to England within weeks. However, on 4 September, Sydenham was
riding a spirited horse near Parliament House, but could not, for a long time, get the animal to pass that building. After a severe application of spur and whip, however, the horse proceeded, but immediately after, put his foot upon a large stone ... not being able to recover, fell and dragged his rider with him, fracturing the leg, and lacerating it above the knee.
This apparently led to a deadly infection. For fifteen days, Sydenham was described as suffering extreme pain, then died the morning of 19 September 1841.[9] As he was unmarried, his peerage became extinct.[4] He was buried at Kingston, in the crypt ofSt George's Cathedral.[3]
Soon after its founding, the present-day city ofOwen Sound, Ontario, was named Sydenham in 1842 in honour of the recently deceased Governor of Canada; in 1856, the community became a town and was renamed Owen Sound after the adjacent body of water. Sydenham is the name of the principal river that runs through Owen Sound. Sydenham was also the name of the formerTownship of Sydenham, which bordered Owen Sound to the east, and in 2001 amalgamated into the municipality ofMeaford, Ontario. Sydenham Community School is in Owen Sound. For more than half a century, Owen Sound's main street was called Poulett Street; in 1909, the community's street names were renumbered on the New York City model, and Poulett Street became 2nd Avenue East.
Sydenham Public School inKingston, Ontario, which has operated as an educational facility since its construction in 1853 as the Kingston County Grammar School, was renamed in the 1890s in memory of Lord Sydenham. It is in downtown Kingston, and is an Ontario-designated heritage building.[10]
Sydenham High School, Ontario, a regional high school, is in the village ofSydenham, Frontenac County, Ontario, northwest of Kingston.
Sydenham Street, in downtown Kingston, runs north-south, and is a two-section street. Its southern section runs from West Street to Brock Street. Its northern section runs from Princess Street to Raglan Road. The two sections are separated by a block of buildings between Brock and Princess Streets.
Sydenham Road, also in Kingston, runs from outer Princess Street northwards to Highway 401 and beyond, to the village of Sydenham.
Sydenham Ward, a municipal electoral district in Kingston, is one of twelve such districts in the city, and this designation has been used in Kingston municipal politics since the 1840s, albeit with its boundaries modified several times over the ensuing years.
The Old Sydenham Heritage Conservation District, in the southeastern sector of Downtown Kingston, was formally designated by the city council on 24 March 2015.[11]
Sydenham Street inSimcoe, Ontario, is named in his honour.
Sydenham Street inLondon, Ontario, which runs between Wellington and Talbot Streets, north of Oxford Street, is also named after him.[12]
Dixie was once named Sydenham.
His memoirs were published by his brother, G. J. Poulett Scrope, in 1844.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Sydenham, Charles Edward Poulett-Thomson, 1st Baron".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 277.Sydenham Street, a private street running through his property, named by Mr. Barker for Lord Sydenham, first General Governor of the United Provinces. When Governor of Canada West he had been a strong advocate of the Union.
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forDover 1826–1833 With:Edward Bootle-Wilbraham to 1828 William Henry Trant 1828–1830 Sir John Reid, Bt 1830–1831 Captain Robert Stanhope 1831–1832 Sir John Reid, Bt from 1832 | Succeeded by |
| New constituency | Member of Parliament forManchester 1832-1839 With:Mark Philips | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Vice-President of the Board of Trade 1830–1834 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Treasurer of the Navy 1830–1834 | |
| Preceded by | President of the Board of Trade 1834 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | President of the Board of Trade 1835–1839 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Governor General of the Province of Canada 1839–1841 | Succeeded by |
| Academic offices | ||
| Preceded by | Chancellor ofKing's College Toronto 1841 | Succeeded by |
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
| New creation | Baron Sydenham 1840–1841 | Extinct |
| International | |
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| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
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